Congestion and Traffic Management

Hemant Tiwari (hemu.ioe@gmail.com)

Traffic and Transportation Engineer
Background:
Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, habitat
of around 6 million people of varying
profession and economic status, is one of the
fast growing cities around the world. It is
characterized by haphazard urbanization,
high population density, rapid development,
centers of various facilities (educational,
health, employment, social, recreational, etc.)
and so on. The inhabitants are forced to face
various problems like congestion, pollution,
aesthetic beauty degradation, and so on.
Among various problems, problem related to
transportation or traffic is also the one.
Transportation problem has unique
characteristics, problems increases even after
infrastructure construction, unlike other field
of civil engineering, where the problem got
solved after construction. Construction or
widening of road leads to environmental
degradation (deforestation, destruction of
agricultural land), increased air pollution,
higher fuel usage, congestion, higher accident
rate, parking problem and so on.
At present, Kathmandu is facing various
traffic problems. Haphazard road network
and increased private vehicle ownership had
led to increase in congestion level, and hence
decreases the journey speed. Unreliable and
un-systematic public transportation, parking
problem in the city core, especially around
Newroad and Thamel, in-adequacy of
footpath are the others serious concerns.
Road safety is the next critical issue which
takes the life of almost 1900 persons per
annum and unimagined economic loss. These
problems are dealt in separate branch of
transportation engineering, called traffic
engineering, which use both management
mathematical principles as well as
management schemes to get rid of these
problems or to recommend the best strategy
to achieve the stated goal and objectives.
Here, we will discuss about the congestion
and the possible remedial strategy.
Congestion and its contributor:
Congestion, in other word called Jam, is the
condition that arises when demand exceed
the capacity of road. Congestion is measured
in terms of time lost, when travelling at
congested time of day compared to that
spend at free flow condition. In London, the
congested time is compared to time taken by
vehicle at middle of the night. Congestion had
becomes a daily headache of urban area,
which eats up about one fifth to one third of
the journey time. Almost every urban cities,
around the world are forced to face this
condition and how could Kathmandu be
untouchable from this problem, in fact, the
condition is even worse in Kathmandu.
Increased standard of living, and unreliable
public transportation had a serious impact on
increase of private vehicle ownership in
Kathmandu valley. 50% of total vehicles
registered in last 10 years are registered in
Kathmandu, and among that 93% are private
vehicles. People are taking vehicle ownership
to display their status and it had become the
medium of show off in young generation.
Banks along with some finance company are
providing vehicle loan at cheaper interest
rate, which further increase the private
vehicle sales. Thus, the increased private
vehicles is one of the contributor of
congestion. Improper road network and
inadequate infrastructure is the another
contributor to congestion. If the demand to
travel through the particular route is very
high, but the road is not wide enough to
accommodate the flow, then congestion is
certain to happen. Similarly, congestion is
inseparable at bottleneck points (junction
where wide road meets narrow roads), for
example we are forced to face congestion at
Maitighar Singadurbar section, as wide
Maitighar - Baneshwor road (just widened)
meet narrow Maitighar-SIngadurbar road.
Although there is dispersal of residential
areas (Kirtipur, Boudha, Kalanki, Patan,
Bhaktapur, Naikap, Budhadilkantha,), but
almost all destination center (governmental
office, recreational center, school, college,
commercial and financial center) lies within
the city core (inside the inner Ring Road).
And, the start time is same (10am) of all
institution and this had forced all vehicle to
ply on road at the same time, and hence
results in congestion. On-street parking and
haphazard stopping of vehicles at bottleneck
points had decreased the capacity of roadway
section and hence cause congestion. Illegal
overtaking operation, accident, uncontrolled
right turning also has significant effect in
congestion.
This give idea about the lane occupancy of
private vehicles. Due to large space required
to carry smaller passengers, increased use of
private vehicle is considered the major
contributor of congestion.
Effects of Congestion
Traffic congestion reduces travel speeds,
increases creates uncertainly and requires
more driver effort. Reduction in travel speed
increases the delay, hence increases the
journey time. It is a major source of
frustration for busy and productive people.
Sometimes, the emergency vehicles as
ambulance or fire extinguisher gets stuck in
congestion, which ultimately results in loss of
life and property. Higher the congestion level,
high will be the emission of air pollutant and
higher will be the environmental degradation.
Air pollutant lead to greenhouse effect, as
well as cause depletion of ozone layer.
Besides contributing to global warming, these
emissions can cause more short-term and
localized problems, such as smog and
increased respiratory problems in a
community due to poor air quality. It is the
silence contributor to increase in accidents.
To overcome the time lost in traffic jams,
people increases their speed above the
normal value and this over speeding became
the cause of accident later on. Large number
of vehicles on the road also decreases the
aesthetic beauty of the city at that particular
instant.
The stopping and starting of vehicles in traffic
jams burns fuel at a higher rate than the
smooth rate of travel on the open highway.
Hence it is said that Congestion is not only
annoying but also costly. As per C.J Johnson,
the congestion cost can be categorized into
additional fuel cost, cost of time lost,
increased in pollutant, increased respiratory
disease, increased operating cost and so on.
High amount of petroleum products are
imported per year in Nepal and congestion
takes our national economy even down as the
demand of petroleum further accelerates.
Various loss due to congestion can be
converted to monitory value, with suitable
consideration to show economic impact of
congestion. Taking some examples around
the world, traffic congestion cost of US cities
ranges between USD 35 billion to USD 48
billion, whereas in Moscow costs USD 1.3
billion a year and in our neighborhood city
Dhaka, traffic congestion eats up USD 3
billion a year.
About 1000 million passengers travel by road
every day, worldwide. If a passenger lose just
1 minute every day in traffic congestion, total
annual time loss will be 700,000YEARS.
Motorists often feel that reducing congestion
would make their lives more efficient and
satisfied. Thus, investment to reduce traffic
congestion is INEVITABLE and JUSTIFIABLE
Remedial solution:
Almost every urban city is facing traffic
congestion and none of them is able to get rid
of it completely,but we can reduce the
congestion level significantly using various
policy strategy. All the possible policy option
can be summarized into following six major
components:Land use, Infrastructure,
Awareness, Information System, Congestion
pricing and Traffic Management.(Source:
www.konsult.leeds.ac.uk)
Land use policy option deals with the re-
arrangement of land based on the service
occurred or in simple words we can
decentralized the facilities or services to
disperse the traffic. Infrastructure options,
simply deals with the construction of new
roads, widening of roads, construction of
flyover and underpass to cope with the
increased demand. The present road
widening within Kathmandu valley (Ring
Road expansion, Maitighar - Tinkune
expansion) falls under this strategy. Making
people aware of cause of congestion and also
of road rule, will also reduce congestion in
some extent. If people obey lane discipline, do
not park or stop their vehicle haphazardly on
road, then we can see some positive result on
our road.
Another possible strategy would be provision
of information system, if we can provide road
user (driver, passengers) the exact traffic
situation at the required point of time, then
the road user can look at other possible
alternatives before choosing their route and
this will contribute to congestion reduction.
At present Metro Traffic FM (95.4 MHz) and
traffic police telephone number 103 are
providing this facilities but their reliability is
under scanner. Another option may be
congestion pricing, though its
implementation part is highly challenging as
people dont like to payextra for the facilities
which had been free before. Congestion
pricing is the mechanism of charging extra to
the vehicle users, who are considered as the
major contributor of congestion. It had been
tried in Singapore (1975), Trondheim (1991),
London (2003), Stockholm (2006) and many
other place. Last and the most important
strategy of controlling of congestion is
adaptation of various traffic management
schemes, which mainly focus on diverting
traffic, dispersing traffic to various times,
reducing demand and so on.
Traffic Management Schemes:
A set of traffic Engineering, Enforcement and
Educational measures for making traffic more
efficient, effective and safer are termed as
traffic management schemes. The basic
principle behind adopting traffic management
schemes is that we dont not sufficient fund
and space (land) to construct enough roads to
accommodate growing traffic demand or even
if we have, we cannot keep constructing or
widened the road every year and so.
The major objective of traffic management
strategy is to increase effective capacity of
available road space, intensive management
of travel demand and efficient traffic
operation. Investment on infrastructure
proves to be costly as well as time consuming
so we need to look at the strategy which is
both economic as well as less time
consuming, thus traffic management schemes
is getting popularity day by day. Before
recommending any solution, we need to
collect required data (e.g. directional traffic
volume, composition of vehicle, speed, road
width, density) and proper analysis need to
be carried out before coming to any sorts of
conclusion. Traffic management can be
viewed in two aspects: firstly traffic
engineering measures to cope with present
demand and secondly management of present
traffic demand.
Traffic engineering measures can be adopted
in three various segments: road section,
intersection and total area. Traffic
engineering strategies in road section
includes One way, truck ban, provision of
reversible lane; strategies in intersection
includes traffic sign and signal, turn
restriction, signal timing review (time based
signal timing) and advanced signal control
whereas holistic area strategies includes area
traffic control system and traffic information
system.
Among two directional traffic volume, if one
directional traffic volume is insignificant, then
the road can be converted to ONE WAY
ROAD. Commercial vehicle, such as truck is
slow moving vehicles, thus barring
Commercial vehicles to the congested area
during peak time period will also prove
beneficial. If we have odd number of lane (say
3,5 or so), then we can use that extra lane in
the direction which have high volume i.e. in
morning it can be used for vehicle moving in
one direction and in evening, it can be used
by vehicle moving in opposite direction. In
context of our country, in morning we have
larger trips coming to city core so the extra
lane can be used for that direction and in
evening it can be used in other direction as
their volume is higher. Proper installation of
sign and marking also gives better output.
Certain turning movement, especially right
turning can be restricted if the volume is
insignificant Signalized intersection increase
the efficiency of intersection, compared to
that of un-signalized intersection, but the
phase timing need to be reviewed for better
functioning. If possible we need to adopt
different signal timing at different course of
time (peak and off peak). We also need to
improve geometry of intersection and
provide separated left turn lane for better
functioning. Actuated traffic signal, which
rearrange the signal timing, based on the on-
field traffic volume is the best measures to
increase efficiency of intersection. In holistic
view, we need to co-ordinate traffic signal
timing of the consecutive intersection to as to
minimize traffic delay. The basic principle of
signal co-ordination is that the vehicle which
lost their time at one intersection will not lost
any time to nearest intersection if it travelled
at design speed. In Kathmandu too, Jadibuti
and Koteshwor intersection were initially
been coordinated but at present it is not
functioning. At the same time we can also go
provide traffic information via television,
radio, or even via traffic related application,
which will guide us in selecting alternative
route in case of congestion. Area traffic
control system provides all the required
necessary information to the users, manage
signal timing at various intersection to cope
with the traffic demand at particular time.
The second strategy to reduce congestion is
traffic demand management, which can be
subdivided into four categories as:
1. Demand Suppression
2. Modal Shift.
3. Demand Dispersal
4. Efficient use of Car

1. Demand Suppression strategy:
As we know congestion occurs when demand
exceeds capacity, so the better solution might
be suppression of demand so that the traffic
volume comes below the capacity of road. The
demand can be suppressed in various ways,
especially by various policies. Congestion
charging or road pricing is one of the measure
to reduce demand. Extra tax can be charged
for various vehicle, considering them as a
major contributor to congestion. While
adopting this measure we need to ensure
acceptability of the method. Also we can go
for various parking control strategy to reduce
demand, such as Park and Ride strategy, in
which private vehicle are parked outside the
city core and public transportation is used for
further movement. High parking charge at
core city also decreases the traffic demand.
Also, we can restrict the vehicle based on the
number plate, for example, we can restrict
private vehicles having last digit of their
registration number plate odd at some day
and allowing them at other day of the week at
various location. This will also help in
reduction of demand significantly
2. Modal Shift :
As discussed previously, single public bus can
accommodate same number of passenger of
private vehicles by just occupying 15% to
25% of area required for private vehicles.
Hence if we can shift the private vehicles user
to public vehicle, then congestion level get
down by 50-75%. PULL and PUSH Strategy
is widely used to promote public
transportation. First we need to make public
transportation much more systematic,
reliable and economic by having fixed time
table, high speed, high comfort level, security,
greater accessibility. Also we need to force
private vehicle user to use public vehicle by
using various strategies, for example we can
cause forced congestion to private vehicles
and give separate or exclusive lane for public
transportation. Policies like Park and Ride
also reduces the private vehicle on the road,
in this policy we park somewhere near the
entrance of city core and forced to take public
transportation to come to city center.
3. Demand Dispersal
Congestion level is too high during peak hour,
especially 8:30-10 in morning and 4:30-7 in
evening, because of high number of vehicle at
road. College, school, offices, banks, etc. all
runs at the same time, so if we can staggered
this time or prolong the peak time, we can
reduce congestion significantly. For this we
need to have different start and end time of
various facilities, for example school time can
be fixed to 8:30-3:30, office time as 9:30-4:30
and college time as 10:30-5:30, this will
distribute vehicles on road at various time
and thus reduce the traffic pressure. We can
also disperse the facilities at various location,
outside the city center to reduce the traffic. If
implemented well outer ring road will reduce
the traffic congestion significantly. Providing
route information encourage the road user to
take alternative route in case of heavy traffic,
this will also reduce congestion to certain
extend.
4. Efficient use of Private vehicles
Vehicle sharing is the efficient way to reduce
traffic congestion. Two or more persons in
neighborhood can share the vehicle if their
destination is almost near. Carpooling or van
polling can also be implemented, which is a
new concept useful for work based trip,
where a car is almost operated like taxi as it
picks up the passenger at their respective
origin and drop to their destination and in
evening they again pick up and drop the same
passengers. High vehicle occupancy lane can
be provided, if road width permits i.e.
providing separate lane for that vehicle which
has high proportion. Also, we need to manage
cargo or freight movement (movement of
goods) so that they will not contribute to
congestion such as proper selection of route,
timing of service delivery, vehicular
frequency and so on.

Our present strategy of widening the road is
just like Dog chasing its own tail, as Road
space will never catch up with vehicle
population. Thus, the long term solution is
promote PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION in the
form of Mass Transit and SAJHA YATAYAT is
one of the form.